I’m spending the next couple days in DC, at an NSF conference on scientific visualization.

I made it to Dulles without incident– I had a perfectly nice exit row aisle seat– but have been at United Airlines Baggage Claim for an hour, and my bag has yet to arrive.

This is what I get for trying to be nice and checking my bag, rather than taking up half of an overhead compartment with a carry-on bag. Next time I’m privatizing my little piece of the storage commons. To heck with everyone else.

I’ve been standing in a line to file a claim for a lost bag, but things aren’t going very well. The person who was running the kiosk has disappeared, and no other United employees seem to know anything. As someone near me said, “Everyone behaves like it’s not their problem.”

Update. Apparently the container was lost on its way from the plane to the terminal, and will be here in the next 15-20 minutes. But this begs the question: How in the world do you misplace a container between the plane and terminal? Is it actually quite easy to do, and it’s a small miracle every time a bag actually appears on time, or is this a sign of monumental stupidity?